Оlena Nifatova

The integrated business structures performance is underpinned by a wide range of external and internal factors that from a business unit perspective may have positive or negative implications for brand building. Moreover, in the context of business integration, the interaction among individual business units is of paramount importance that dramatically affects the performance of the entire business structure. The research objective is to provide a methodological framework for branding development through the calculation of integrated complementary and synergistic effects indicators, based on their compliance with the criteria of congruence and compatibility within architectonic elements of integrated business structures. The methodological toolkit design to estimate the integrated indices for complementary and synergistic effects involves the following stages: building a set of partial indicators for assessing complementary and synergetic effects, developing an algorithm to calculate an integrated index for complementary effect from internal and external brand interactions within integrated business structures (IBS), developing an algorithm to calculate an integrated index for a synergetic effect from brand integration within a business structure, individual business unit brand classification by different complementary and synergistic effects manifestations.
The proposed methodological approach contributes to facilitating brand integration in mergers and acquisitions, as well as enhancing the allocation effectiveness of portfolio roles of integrated business structure brands in product offering in the integration framework.

Corporate social responsibility issues are becoming increasingly important in the banking sector. It refers to the responsibility of banks for their business activities subject to conceivable implications for society and the environment. Currently, the modern banking system in Ukraine is in the process of shaping its own model and integrating corporate social responsibility into all business processes. Thus, it is argued that objective comprehensive assessment of corporate social responsibility of Ukrainian banks is an essential prerequisite to enhance their performance, along with building a good rapport with clients and encouraging trust in society. From the above perspective, this article suggests an approach to assess corporate social responsibility at banks which entails implementing consistent stages in evaluating the development degree of the three corporate social responsibility components: social, environmental and economic. The assessment framework substantiates a set of indicators for measuring the degree of corporate social responsibility at banks by estimating the ratio of the GRI related aspects in the financial statements of banks, and identifying the possibility to implement the main provisions of the Social Accountability International 8,000 standard and the GRI G4 (Global Reporting Initiative). The proposed approach to measuring corporate social responsibility in banking through the instruments of a three-dimensional matrix and to positioning the banks by the areas of their corporate social responsibility has been tested by processing an array of 82 non-financial reports of 31 banks over the 2016–2018 period.